• Tag Archives Renaissance
  • Ghosts

    Imbolc                                                                          Valentine Moon

    Today, a bit tired due to early rising, moving books put a weight on my shoulders.  It was the past and its tangled feelings.  Found my first passport and saw a young man with a full head of dark brown hair and a beard that matched.  Surprised me, so long have I seen his gray descendant in the mirror.

    (arrestedmotion.com 2012 10 upcoming aron wiesenfeld new paintings arcadia-gallery)

    That was my passport for Colombia, the trip to check out a bank for the poorest of the poor.  Carolyn Levy was in my life at that point, between my divorce from Raeone and meeting Kate a year plus later.  A hard time, raising a 6 year old boy, working night and day between church meetings and organizing.  A hard time, too, since the future had grown unclear.  Something big had happened or was about to happen, but its outlines in my life were not yet clear.

    Then I moved out the books related to shifting my ordination to the Unitarian-Universalist movement.   Again, a time when the future had become unclear.  Writing had not shown the promise it offered when Kate and I agreed I should leave the Presbytery.  Frustrated there, I regressed, headed back to the trade that I knew.  More lack of clarity.

    Poor decisions.  I chose Unity UU over First Unitarian for my internship.  An error.   The humanist congregation would have fit me much better.  Then, at the end of an interesting year, I accepted a job as minister of development.  Chief fund raiser.   OMG.  One of the really boneheaded decisions in my life.  Not the only one, for sure, and not the worst one, but dumbest?  Probably.  Kate saw it coming. I ignored her.  Sigh.

    (Vincenzo Foppa The Young Cicero Reading 1464)

    Those books were the heaviest to move because I’ve traveled out of the UU circle, too.  A solo practitioner am I, as the Wiccans say.  In that vein though I retained many of my books on spirituality, works on natural theology and those commentaries I mentioned on the Torah and the book of Revelation.

    Heavy, especially with lack of sleep thrown in.  Ghosts.  They’re real and they live in the closets, basements and attics of our mind.


  • Carpe this Diem

    Imbolc                                                 Waxing Bridgit Moon

    OK.  Today is a new day.  I do not plan to torture my computers anymore today in regard to my legacy laserjet printer.  It has been a faithful companion throughout the last 19  years and I do not plan to give up on it yet.  Even so, I’ve experienced my tolerance level of geek futility since I tried to convert it from parallel processing to usb, so it will rest on the sidelines for a while as I install the new multi-function printer later in the day.  If I can find a new laserjet printer for under $300 I may just get one with a native usb connection.  Not sure I’d do with old faithful.  I might bring it in here (the study) and see if I can convince it to mate up with the Gateway in here.  I might give it to somebody with a parallel printer port.

    I know, too, that losing colonies is still common for beekeepers and that my experience is not unusual.  In fact, as I said a bit earlier, I was not surprised by the deaths of two of the colonies. Only the package colony’s demise surprised me, since it seemed to have plenty of honey and a healthy group of bees.  Another year is another year.

    With temperatures above freezing the dogs are frisky, staying outside longer, bumping, running, tails held high.  They both hunt between the honey house and the play house, noses to the ground, body alert.  Kona still finds the outdoors a bit too cool and no wonder, she no longer has any hair on her butt.  I know how it feels when there’s no hair on the head, probably a similar sensation.  And it is hard for Kona to put a hat or a scarf on that particular location.

    I’m inclining toward a Renaissance theme for the Titian tours.  This exhibit showcases the High Renaissance in Venice from its beginnings in the early 1500’s through its end in the 1580’s.  Venice held on to the Renaissance longer than the rest of Italy, though even its extension ended well before the Renaissance limped toward its end in the 1700’s in northern Europe.  The Renaissance gave shape and content to our era, actually doing what those embroiled in it thought they were doing, ushering in the modern age, shifting from the ancien regime to the days of democracy, individualism, capitalism and science, days within which we still live.

    Not often do we have the chance to experience such a clear visual record of this dramatic change in the lifeways of Western civilization, a record written not in words, but in the brushstrokes and vital imaginations of artists who distilled the time and painted it.  On canvas.  Using oils.


  • Next Week

    Winter                                                                      Waning Moon of the Cold Month

    With the Latin tutoring session behind me and Chapter 26 coming up, I downloaded a commentary on Caesar’s Gallic Wars with Latin text.  I’m gonna have a shot at it for a while.

    Started my Titian research last week by reading the Grove entry on Titian and checking out other websites and the Met’s timelines.  Printed out some stuff.  Next I’m going to read the catalog to get an overview of the show and to get images of each object in a file so I can reference them as I work.

    Also trying to decide what to do for the Woolly retreat.  One thought is to share my work on Ovid.  Still, it’s pretty inelegant, representing as those first 60 or so verses do the earliest of my work both in learning the language and then attempting translation.  Another is to talk about Big History but that seems pedantic.  I’ve thought about reading the first pages of Missing, just to see what folks think, but it’s low brow compared to the stuff most Woollies read.  Gotta decide sometime soon since the retreat starts on February 3rd.  I head out right after the Titian lecture.

    Another possibility is to share the research process on Titian, let them see what it takes to learn enough to tour a special exhibit.

    I just had another idea as I wrote this:  do an exegetical piece on Jacob at the Jabbok Ford.  About dreams, struggling with the angel of our better selves.  Hmmm.